Digital-Lifestyles – Page 188 – Digital-Lifestyles pre-empted and reported thousands of articles on the then-coming impact that technology was to have on all forms of Media. Launched in 2001 as a research blog to aid its founder, Simon Perry, present at IBC 2002, it grew into a wide ranging, multi-author publication that was quoted in many publications globally including the BBC, was described by the Guardian as 'Informative' and also cited in a myriad of tech publications before closing in 2009

Digital-Lifestyles pre-empted and reported thousands of articles on the then-coming impact that technology was to have on all forms of Media. Launched in 2001 as a research blog to aid its founder, Simon Perry, present at IBC 2002, it grew into a wide ranging, multi-author publication that was quoted in many publications globally including the BBC, was described by the Guardian as 'Informative' and also cited in a myriad of tech publications before closing in 2009

3 X-Series Launch: Analysis
3 has seriously stepped up the offerings for providing services to mobile handsets. Their new service, X-Series, offers viewing of your own TV using Orb and free voice calls using Skype.
The general data use will be flat-fee, or “all X-Series services will be free at the point of use, subject only to fair usage limits,” as Three puts it. Initially there will be an additional fee for the use of Slingbox and Orb.
Hutchison Whampoa, the owners of 3, haven’t been doing this all by themselves. The partner list is extensive including Skype, Sling Media, Yahoo, Nokia, Google, EBay, Microsoft’s MSN, Orb and Sony Ericsson.
The service is launching in the UK on 1st December, with Three’s other markets (Italy, Australia, Austria, Denmark, Hong Kong, Israel, Ireland and Sweden) during 2007.
The service will launch with two handsets supporting all of the features, the Nokia N73 and the Sony Ericsson W950i
Comment
Three are playing to their strengths. They and their network know how to shift data around – they’ve been pushing video (the most dense use of data) on their networks commercially for over two years. As Frank Sixt, Group Finance Director of Hutchison Whampoa, said, “This is why we created 3, and what our network was designed to deliver.”
3 have taken a number of applications that have been available to the technically aware for some time, but cleverly brought them together into a single package that all consumers should be able to understand.
It’s companies like Hutchison Whampoa that start moving industries. Significant innovation within the mobile business has been static for a long time, with only small changes to their offerings. There’s been a near unanimous ignoring of VoIP services running over networks – not surprising really when it would remove a significant source of income for them.
There will be repercussions – not least from the TV companies who really don’t like the idea that people can watch their TV when they’re on the move. To be precise it’s the fact that they don’t make any money out of it, is the bit they don’t like.
Phrase Spotting – Mobile broadband – the second time we’ve heard that phrase in as many days. We wonder if Orange had heard what 3 would be announcing and decided to scoop them on the first usage.
Three X-Series
16 November, 2006
Moixa USBCell: Rechargeable Batteries via USB
UK firm Moixa have come up with a rechargeable battery that can be re-charged on a USB port, as well as more normal battery chargers.
You know what it’s like when you go on trips, you end up with a bag full of chargers and plug converters. These batteries from Moixa could lighten your load by removing a battery recharger from your packing.
It achieves this flexibility by popping the top of the AA battery off to reveal a USB connector. Charging the currently available 1,300mAh cell fully takes six hours, but we understand that quick 10 minutes charges will give results too. Moixa claim the batteries don’t suffer from ‘battery memory,’ where capacity can be quickly lost by brief charging.
We imagine that the batteries won’t be used as the primary source of power, but highly useful for a charge anywhere backup. While 1,300mAh isn’t ideal with high-drain devices like cameras, it’ll get you through a sticky patch.
It initially launched in September, but somehow we didn’t notice it. Todays announcement of their deal with DSGi, the largest electronics retailing group in the UK that includes such delights as Currys, Currys.digital and PC World, brought it back into focus for us.
Moixa have other batteries in the pipeline, including AAA, 9V and most interestingly, phone and device batteries.
A bit of background on Moixa. You may have heard of them before, they’re behind the PDA folding keyboard, which is in use in over 2 million products worldwide.
If you’re wondering where the heck does a name like Moixa come from, it’s the Greek word Axiom reversed. Used it in the following way, “Moixa rethinks market axioms and creates new technology and Intellectual Property.”
They retail for £13 and are in UK and US shops now.
USB Cell
16 November, 2006
UK Broadband Consumer Satisfaction Hits New Low
A new YouGov survey has found that “free” broadband deals have resulted in lower customer satisfaction levels.
The figures released by the uSwitch Customer Satisfaction Report show that most providers aren’t managing to keep their increasing customer numbers happy, with a 9% drop in broadband satisfaction levels registered among the 11,000 customers surveyed.
The report also puts consumer’s trust in their Internet suppliers at an “all time low”.
Scraping along the bottom of the customer satisfaction levels is the notorious TalkTalk service run by Carphone Warehouse, which could only muster 70% of punters happy with their service.
The service was the subject of a recent BBC Watchdog investigation after thousands of customers failed to get connected and were forced to endure lengthy waits on costly pay-per-minute helplines.
Orange fared just as badly, coming joint bottom, while Virgin.net scored the highest customer satisfaction levels at 85%, ahead of Telewest and Tiscali.
uSwitch said that despite1.5 million new customers signing up broadband over the past ten months, providers had failed to match the growth with improvements in customer service levels.
“It’s disappointing to see that the majority of providers are failing to accompany the growth in customer numbers by sufficient growth in customer service operations and the required investment in their technology to ensure that they are looking after customer needs in an acceptable manner,” said Steve Weller, communications chief services at uSwitch.
“These results should provide a clear signal that customers are demanding a more comprehensive, sophisticated range of services, and it is becoming more important than ever before for providers to offer value for money in terms of both price and service,” he added.
uSwitch.
15 November, 2006
Orange Expand Mobile BBC World Deal To 8 Countries
The BBC is expanding its distribution with Orange to take its international news service, BBC World, to Orange mobile phones in eight countries.
The live stream of BBC World has been available on Orange mobiles in France for the past two years, so given this background it make sense for Orange to want to expand the coverage. They’re taking it to quite an assortment of countries – Belgium, Poland, the Netherlands, Romania, Portugal, Jordan, Egypt and the Dominican Republic.
The live streams will be distributed over either 3G or EDGE to what they’re calling “mobile broadband customers,” (first time we’ve heard Orange use the term before).
We spoke to Gerry Ritchie, BBC World’s Regional Director and Business Development, Europe, Middle East, South Asia, Americas (A title that would at one time have been an anathema – BizDev … at the BBC!) about the deal.
Gerry said that in the time that they’ve been doing video to mobiles, they’ve come to realise that ‘made for’ packages (edited summaries) don’t really work. When people hear about an event, they “turn to BBC World for immediate coverage, so even a 10 minute editing delay won’t work. People place trust in the BBC brand, as it is known for the quality of its reporting, not just getting the news there first, but making sure it’s accurate.”
BBC World is held within the commercial arm of the BBC, so Orange are paying the BBC for the privilege of showing it to their subscribers. Gerry wouldn’t give specific details of deal, but we did learn that they don’t do deals on the number of streams that are watched.
The deal isn’t on an exclusive basis, as the BBC want to get their content distributed as widely as they can, but clearly Orange will have a major advantage in being the first mover.
BBC World has already been highly successful in getting its content distributed around the world, including 46 cruise liners, 36 airlines and 26 mobile phone platforms.
BBC World
15 November, 2006
Handmark Announces Zagat To Go v5.0
Handmark have released the latest version of their consumer survey-based dining, travel and leisure information program, Zagat To Go v5.0.
Included in the new version are hotel, resort and spa guide listings as well as a guide to America’s top golf courses, along with updated restaurant listings for smartphones.
Offering automated wireless content and rating updates, Zagat comes with detailed street-level maps, and can provide turn-by-turn driving directions on the user’s handheld.
Clearly going for the caddy-dragging, business travelling set, Zagat are making a big ho-hah about their Top Golf Course guide, which is based on the opinions of nearly 6,000 ~~ditchwater-dull golf bores~~ keen sportsmen..
The program now carries survey rankings for over 25,000 restaurants and nightspots in 70+ cities, with automatic free content updates.
“Zagat To Go v5.0 will help travellers find hotels, restaurants, golf courses and other entertainment destinations – along with qualified recommendations – while on the move,” enthused Tim Zagat, co-founder of Zagat Survey.
“Today’s consumers rely more than ever on their mobile phones for restaurant and hotel information. Handmark is proud to continue our long-standing relationship with Zagat to provide the latest survey findings on the Treo, BlackBerry, motorola Q and other Windows Mobile handhelds,” bubbled Douglas Edwards, Handmark co-founder and executive vice president.
Zagat To Go v5.0 is available for the Palm OS, BlackBerry, motorola Q and other Windows Mobile Pocket PCs and Smartphone platforms and comes as free upgrade for existing customers forking out the $29.95 yearly subscription fee.
mobile.zagat.com.
15 November, 2006
Blogger Beta Bums Off Brixton Bloggee
Now, we understand that when you agree to install a beta product, you can expect a few glitches.
Maybe a few features won’t work, maybe a few functions won’t do what you expect, or maybe you’ll get the odd error or two.
When it’s a Google beta – a company whose innovative beta programs are often more polished than the final versions of some software products – you can usually feel pretty sure that they’re not going to foist some unfinished rubbish on you.
Well, at least that’s what we thought before trying out their dreadful Blogger beta ‘upgrade.’
Seduced by the shiny new features bigged up on the Blogger homepage, we foolishly elected to move over to the new Blogger Beta and have been struggling with it ever since.
Immediately, we were plagued with time outs, and that ruddy annoying animated exclamation mark icon that appears when Blogger’s uploading became a near permanent fixture on our screen.
Trying to upload a simple blog post seemed an impossible task, with this error being repeatedly thrown up: “Your Publish is Taking Longer than Expected. To continue waiting for it to finish, click here.”
Settings were lost. Links stopped working. The archive seemed to have disappeared altogether as all links gave ‘404’ errors (fortunately we found that the archived pages were still there, but the links had all been incorrectly set).
After several hour of fiddling about, we’ve only just got the blog working again and we’re not entirely sure how. You can see it here (or at least we hope you can).
Google’s perpetual betas
After I had a late night whinge on the urban75 bulletin board, a poster sagely observed about Google’s beta policy:
“The worst thing is that they keep their products in beta for so long. Meaning you’re never quite sure if it’s a fully working product and you can’t complain when it goes wrong. It’s a very ‘google’ thing to do too, they practically invented the idea of the never-ending beta program.”
In our experience, it felt like we were dealing with an alpha product and seeing as the process is one way, once you move to Blogger Beta you can’t switch back.
We’re sure that in the end Google will produce a nicely polished update to Blogger that consumers will love, but for now we strongly advise users to stick to the old version.
After all, life’s too short to be staring at a “Your Publish is Taking Longer than Expected” screen.
Blogger Help Group (you’ll need this)
14 November, 2006
iPods Integrated Into Planes
Apple have just announced that they have signed deals with six major airlines, offering the first seamless integration between iPod and the planes in-flight entertainment systems.
Starting mid 2007, Air France, Continental, Delta, Emirates, KLM and United passengers will be able to charge their iPod while in the air, but more interestingly be able to watch the video held on their iPods on the seat-back monitor.
Beyond that, Panasonic Avionics Corporation is working with Apple to build it into other airlines
Comment
This is a great deal for Apple. Not only do they fix the problem with people running their batteries down during a flight, and possibly not having any juice when they land and continue their journey, but as they’ve got first mover advantage on this. It’s going to be significantly harder for another player to have their kit integrated in to the planes. There’s only so many connectors that the airlines can make available.
We asked Apple if it was an exclusive deal, thereby blocking out other media players, but at the time of going to press we hadn’t heard back.
For the passenger, surely the wise move would be just to provide a USB port and allow people to plug whichever device they have with them, and have the in-flight system decode the media file and play them back. Thereby not being locked to a make of player.
The only down side we can see for this is for the airlines, as they won’t be making money out of charging for films.
14 November, 2006
Sennheiser Announces Street Range Of Headphones
Those crazy hep cats at Sennheiser have launched a range of seven new economy-priced headphones aimed at da yoot.
Served up in a range of bright colours and stylish designs, the ‘phones are built to a tough (“almost unbreakable”) standard, with prices ranging from £10 to £25. All incorporate a neodymium-iron driver for top notch sound.
The bottom of the range MX50 Street in-ear phones knock out for just £10, while the next model up, the MX 51 Street adds a case for a fiver more.
The next model up, the MXL 51 Street, is bundled with a lanyard and case for another fiver.
The curious looking MX55 in-ear headphones – also £20 – feature a “twist to fit” construction and come with the Sennheiser Basswind System Plus for extra oomph in da hood, with the MX55 VC adding a volume control for an extra fiver.
Moving up the range, the £20 OMX 50 VC features clip-on earphones, while the “supra-aural” (whassat?) clip-on OMX 52 Street includes the Sennheiser Basswind technology and exchangeable design parts for £25.
An old school neckband pair of cans, the PMX 50 Street ‘phones wrap up the new range and come with exchangeable design parts and retail for £25.
All are likely to sound better than the headphones that came bundled with your MP3 player, but if you want to get the best out of your music player (and don’t mind looking like an extra from the Battle Of Britain), we recommend saving up for the fabulous Grado SR60s.
Find out more about Sennhesiser’s new range of Street headphones at their ghastly pop-up, Flash-tastic website, where just about anything that can move, shuffle and wobble, does.
14 November, 2006
iLuv i1055 Portable DVD Player with Video iPod Docking System
Now available for early Christmas shoppers is the rather curious iLuv i1055, a portable tablet-style DVD player with a built in 7-inch TFT LCD and twin 2 x 0.5W speakers.
Nothing too unusual about that until you spin the thing around to see that it’s also got an iPod dock bolted on the back.
The idea is that you slap in your 5th generation iPod with video (30GB, 60GB, 80GB) and then play back movies stored on the player via the 7″ widescreen (16:9 aspect ratio) active-matrix LCD.
The media player comes in two colours (black and white, so you can match it to your iPod), while those with older 1st or 2nd-generation iPods can use a line-in jack on the back of the unit.
The unit also comes with an S-Video output for external TV viewing, OSD (On-Screen Display) and supports multiple subtitle/angle/audio functions and slow/fast motion play and zoom operation.
The iLuv i1055 can be powered by a 10V AC Power Adapter, 12V Cigarette Lighter Adapter or its built Ni-MH Rechargeable Battery, serving up a claimed 2.5 hours playing time (which means you may come unstuck if you’re trying to watch one of those ultra long arthouse movies).
The unit has recently appeared on Amazon UK’s site priced at £150, but be advised there’s a 1-2 week shipping wait.
i-Luv Product page
14 November, 2006
Evesham’s Light Book – World’s Lightest?
UK PC vendors Evesham have rolled out what they’re claiming is the smallest and lightest notebook on the market to feature an optical drive.
Appropriately dubbed the ‘Light Book,’ the superlight lappie measures up at a slimline 283 x 238 x 35mm and weighs just 1.2kg.
Lurking inside its rather ordinary exterior is an Intel Core Solo low voltage processor, Intel GMA 950 video engine and a 12.1-inch XGA display (that’s 1024 x 768 pixels to you and me).
What makes this wee laptop unusual is the fact that Evesham’s engineers have managed to wedge in a DVD/CDRW/Dual Layer DVD-RW drive, instead of offering the usual external optical drive bundled with most small laptops.
Users can fine-tune their own set-ups, but a typical £999 configuration comes with 512MB DDR 533 RAM, a reasonably capacious 60GB hard drive and a 4-in-1 card reader.
Connectivity options include built-in Wi-Fi, a CRT monitor output and three USB ports, with a Finger Print Identification system adding extra peace of mind.
There’s also onboard audio and speakers and a battery life claimed at a healthy five hours, with an optional extended battery ramping uptime to a day-spanning ten hours.
Expected to start hitting the shelves in a few weeks, the laptops will come with Evesham’s three year warranty.
Evesham
13 November, 2006